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This benchmark investigates a steady flow in a section of a human carotid artery. There exists no analytical solution for this problem: far from it, the benchmark reproduces the characteristics of a typical production environment. The geometry of the artery is provided in form of a generic surface mesh, and inlet/outlet conditions are obtained from a semi-analytical description of the full human arterial system. The problem is simulated with Palabos and with AnSys(R) CFX, and the benchmark includes a grid convergence study, and comparison of point-wise and integral quantities. With the large amount of provided accurate data, this is an ideal benchmark for validation of your own CFD code on a non-trivial problem.

Benchmark Overview

The image on the right represents the benchmark geometry, in the form of a triangular surface mesh. It represents a section of a human carotid that undergoes a bifurcation (the main artery is split into two secondary arteries). The flow enters from the main artery, on the bottom of the image, and the outflows are located in the secondary arteries. A so-called aneurysm, a pathological, ball-shaped deformation is visible at the intersection. The rupture of such an aneurysm can be deadly, and one of the interests of a numerical study is the investigation of the flow structure and of wall stresses in the aneurysm to devise new methods to inhibit such an event.

The conditions of the benchmark are kept simple, for the sake of clarity and ease of comparison:

The flow is incompressible, Newtonian and stationary.

A constant flux is imposed at the inlet by means of a velocity Poiseuille profile, fully placed inside the approximate circle of the inlet channel (the velocity is exactly zero on the walls).

A constant pressure is imposed on the outlets, of equal value for both of them.

The surface mesh was generated artificially with help of the open-source software shapes, and we would like to express our thanks to the authors of this highly useful program.

The STL file of this benchmark, as well as the source code of the Palabos implementation of the benchmark, are wrapped up in the Palabos release, and can be found in the directory examples/showCases/aneurysm.

Measured Quantities

The following data is measured at the steady flow state:

The average energy in the domain

The RMS vorticity in the domain

The pressure drop between inlet and outlets (both outlets have the same pressure)

The velocity-norm, vorticity-norm, and pressure in each of the six points P1, ..., P6.

Furthermore, energy iso-contour lines are plotted on the three planes Plane1, Plane2, and Plane3.

The coordinates of the benchmark points and planes are listed in the following table, and are illustrated in the figure.